>
> >It is certainly true for apis cerana.  Over smoking will often provoke
> absconding
>

Thanks for the information, Stan.  Of the explanations for why the European
honey bee changes its behavior as it does in response to smoke, the "relic
behavior" hypothesis can be legitimately argued.

Since the ancestral Asian  Apis species abscond in response to smoke, then
it is biologically plausible that the EHB continues to carry genes for the
associated behavioral changes in response to smoke.

Any beekeeper can observe that the house bees immediately begin filling
their crops with nectar or honey from the combs, and that older bees
decrease the degree to which they defend the colony.  The odor of smoke is
also clearly repellent to bees, and is often used to encourage them to
move, or to arouse them to take flight.  Such a suite of responses
certainly suggests an innate "flight from impending cremation" behavior.

On the other hand, other hypotheses, such as suppression of olfaction,
would not be expected to elicit the observed behavioral changes.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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